


Paene Perfectus

by The_Evil_I



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, First Time, Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-19 14:40:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9445892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Evil_I/pseuds/The_Evil_I
Summary: Sherlock’s life is almost perfect.  His family is reunited.  John and Rosie are whole, healthy, and regular visitors at 221B Baker Street, itself rebuilt and home again.  John is happy and their friendship has never been more secure.But something is stuck in his brain like an earworm, something John said that circles his mind like a record scratch.  Romantic entanglement would complete him as a human being.  He’s certain, after everything they’ve been through, that John will never love him back.  Is Sherlock willing to give up near-perfection to find his missing piece?Eventual happy ending, and by that, I of course mean Johnlock.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am trying SO HARD to fix series four. It's increasingly difficult to figure out how to get these two idiots together if we take the entirety of series four at face value. But I'm trying. They gave us canon, I'm dealing with it.
> 
> Not brit-picked, or beta'd. Just me.
> 
> Eventual happy ending, I PROMISE. I need to break things a little before I find a way to put them back together again. A couple of short chapters to get us started because I am physically unable to begin a work in media res. 
> 
> Please let me know what you think! Thank you for reading!

It was almost everything Sherlock ever wanted.

So close to perfect it hurt to think about too much, that his life had become, suddenly and unexpectedly, _pleasant_.

He had a sister, Eurus, a shocking surprise inclusion in his life. A sister! The sister he never knew he had, and they played violin together. She was the one who had taught him his one remaining (legal) panacea, and she was still teaching him, even now, without words. Her presence in his life was a balm, a poultice on a wound he didn’t know existed. Sherlock lost her when they were both children. And now he’d gotten her back. It was a healing scar on the loss of his best friend, Victor. It was a fading scar on the loss of his family home, his childhood, his memories, his ability to have a normal childhood. But having her close, and silent, and loving him now in her own way, was as good as it was possibly ever going to get.

Somehow, the knowledge of Eurus changed Mycroft, too. He was softer. Less perfect in his own way. Humanized, irrevocably, by their sister’s games and perhaps too from no longer needing to guard the dark secret he’d built his career and life around. They talked, more often. Smiled at each other. The sibling rivalry faded and deepened into the respect and _philia_ that should have been there the whole time. Eurus was what they had been missing. Her insanity somehow brought them closer together. 

All in a day’s work, for a Holmes.

His parents lost some of the grief he had been seeing for decades without bothering to put a name to it. They seemed… not happy, not quite, but softer. Content. Their children, all alive, all together, as happy an ending as they could have hoped for.

Two of their children they once thought dead, violin duets ringing through solid glass.

It was the first time Sherlock really understood what he had done to them by jumping. He didn’t know, he couldn’t have known, he should have found another way. Too late. As happy an ending as possible, otherwise. _Keep your hands off it_.

And then there was John.

Mary has been dead for six months. Rosie was a blossoming, rambunctious two year old. John was... still not okay.

He tried, for Rosie. For Sherlock. Sherlock can see him trying, his smile too broad, his laugh too light, his grip on his daughter too tight. John lost his family; Sherlock gained his back and then some. In gaining his family he very much included John under that label, but he doubted very much that John included himself. Family to John was John and Rosie. John was slavishly devoted to her, Sherlock the only other person he let hold her.

But even there, John was getting better. He was still Sherlock’s best friend, his brother, his comrade and partner in all ways.

All ways but one.

Sherlock’s life was very nearly perfect. So close he could taste it. Family, friends, a child even. Not his own, but John’s--the closest he would ever get to being a father. But something was missing. Something large enough that it threatened to poke a hole in the dizzying perfection of his reality.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not brit-picked or beta'd. Please let me know what you think and thank you for reading!

That Sherlock was in love with John was something he came to terms with a very long time ago.

Years, really. It was still amazing that he _had_ a relationship in his life that could only be counted in units of years. It surprised him over and over again. Much like John himself.

When Sherlock Holmes found himself willing to jump off a building (fake or not, you don’t jump off a building unless you’re prepared to actually hit the ground) for John Watson there was no more denying the fact. He was in love. He was in love with John and loved John and always would and always would be. Love for John was the inferno in his belly when he jumped, burning so brightly that he could almost feel as though he floated there in the sky, just for a moment, as though held aloft in a hot air balloon. 

Sherlock Holmes would do anything for John Watson. If he lived through taking down Moriarty’s network, he promised himself then, he would devote the rest of his life to loving John. In whatever way he could, for however long John would let him. It was an easy promise to make knowing in his heart of hearts that he probably wasn’t ever going to see his friend again.

Then, when he did make it back home, and John had found someone else in Sherlock’s absence, Sherlock took that bright, furious ball of love and made himself love Mary, too. Because Mary was part of John. And he promised. If that was all of John he was going to get, he was going to fulfill his promise with the very best of his ability.

It turned out that ability was exceptionally underestimated.

He loved Mary through being shot, because John needed danger, and she was dangerous. He loved her through watching his own hand pull the trigger on Magnussen, because John had _chosen_ her. He loved through her a death sentence and an overdose and a Victorian dream that almost convinced him that maybe he could still love John instead.

Sherlock loved Mary through giving birth to John’s baby, even though that was exceptionally easy, because loving Rosie required absolutely no effort at all.

He loved her through her past, and lying about her past, and running, and failing to hide well enough.

Mary was loved by Sherlock up to and including the moment she took a bullet for him. He hated her, then, for doing that to John. For being the second person to do that to John. For reminding Sherlock that he had been the first. 

Sherlock loved John through their distance, loved him when they were close, loved him from the moment he woke up to the moment he went to sleep, loved him in his dreams.

And now here they were. Mary was dead. Eurus was contained. John and Sherlock were John and Sherlock again, finally. Sherlock still adoring, helpless, infatuated for so long and with nothing, not a scrap of reciprocation, from the man he loved for so long and with every quivering fibre of his heart.

John was right, as he so often was, when he said that Sherlock needed romantic entanglement. He wanted it, more than anything. Not even the sex, not really, not with the same burn and desire as simply having someone there. Someone who would have him. Someone who would hold him, sometimes, if he needed to be held. Someone who would stroke his hair, or his cheek. Bestow kisses. Silly little desires, forced into dormancy for so long, finally reviving now that Sherlock was cautiously optimistic about this level of contentment continuing into the long term.

John was right. Sherlock wasn't complete. He needed someone to love who would love him back. 

What made everything so damned difficult, even now, was that he wanted that person to be _John_. They were so, so nearly there. He’d thought, once… and then thought again, many times, that being together, like that, was where they were going to end up. It felt inevitable. Like falling. Like floating. That one, stricken moment in Sherlock’s memory where he’d hung in the air like a star, before plunging to the ground. But it never happened.

Was he to blame? He wondered often. Aborted attempts, on his part. Times when he should have said something, had been so close to saying something, and then hadn’t. But then he thought of John and his militant denials, his humour and changing the subject at those tense moments, and his mind chased itself around in circles. Blame and guilt and blame and guilt again. Untenable. 

And now it was… different. They loved each other, undeniably. They completed each other. But whatever he had once seen in John’s eyes when they looked at each other sometimes… when he thought he’d seen John’s gaze dart away from his lips when they stood too closely… it was all gone. John, in losing Mary, had lost much of the spark he’d once had. He wasn’t the same man. To be short and ridiculously cliche, he wasn’t the man Sherlock had fallen in love with.

Not that it mattered in the slightest, of course. Sherlock made a promise. He’d meant it. He would love John forever. 

But something was missing in his life that John couldn’t give him.

He stayed in a fugue state for weeks, thinking. Running scenarios. Going over every single frame of every interaction he’d had with John Watson when he had been sure that John loved him back. 

What he had now was almost perfect. So close he could taste it. The facts, he knew, were these: he loved John Watson and would forever love John Watson. John would never love him back the way he craved to be loved. He needed someone in his life beyond even the constant friendship that John gave him. John would resent the intrusion of anyone into their sexless domesticity. Jealousy, teasing jealousy--once a clue, he thought, into the inner workings of his friend's heart. Now proof that John was merely possessive of the last remaining relationship in his life capable of adult conversation. Most of the time.

Sherlock loved, and craved, and mourned, and reasoned, spinning in circles until he thought he would break apart with the force of all the feelings spiraling through his blood and burrowing into his mind.

Soon, he knew. Soon. It would all come to a head. This was something he _needed_. John would understand. He'd had Mary, after all, and their friendship was still as stable as it had ever been.

They could make it work. Nothing had to change.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not beta'd or brit-picked, sorry! Thank you so much for reading :)

“You’ve been thinking about something,” John said. He looked up briefly from his laptop, a quick check to see if Sherlock was paying attention or sequestered in his mind palace, before looking back down and giving his keyboard half a dozen distracted taps.

It was a cold, murky evening in November, almost two months since Sherlock came to his revelation and eight months since Mary died. It was how both of them measured time, these days.

John and Rosie were visiting. John came with a bag packed for two of them for two days, stretched to three if Rosie didn’t make too much a mess of herself and ruin all of her clothes. John liked to take vacations from the house he shared with Mary. Not often, and never for long enough, just the right length of time for the two of them to fall into a quiet, easy domesticity, before John packed up himself and Rosie and went back to his real life. 

He liked to write his blog entries here. They were much more subdued entries - and adventures - now that John had a duty not to orphan his toddler, but he obviously still relished writing them and his presence here, writing about their cases, always made Sherlock’s chest feel too tight. Rosie sleeping soundly upstairs and a good fire going completed the domestic illusion.

Sherlock gave John a small, hidden smile, even though it pained him. He’d been thinking about _something_ for a long time. Long enough for speculation to turn into certainty and the knowledge that he had to say something to John. It was a good time. John was soft and open with one too many whiskies, a warm fire, and happy nostalgia. Now was as good of a time as any to finally get the weight of the conversation they had to have off his chest. “Tell me how you know,” he said. His heart beat madly and his hands, folded in on each other in his lap, trembled.

John looked back up, his quick smile fading when he saw the look Sherlock knew he had on his face. “Hard to miss,” He said. “I know you, remember? You’ve been quiet for weeks. You remind me of when.” John shrugged with his good shoulder. “Irene.”

Of course John would jump straight to that. He always did. Sherlock breathed deeply, considering his words. John abandoned any pretense that he was looking at his computer, and their eyes met across the room.

“John, I. Have something to tell you.” There. He had to do it now or else he would never say it. 

“You okay?” John asked. He put his laptop on the floor and got to his feet, walking slowly over to the sofa and standing in front of where Sherlock was perching on one cushion, his feet bare and pale.

“I’m fine,” Sherlock answered automatically. He held eye contact until John was close, and broke away. Then, “No, scratch that. I’m not fine. I mean, I’m well, but I’m not… not perfect, and… well, I. I really believe that I could be. I think. I mean, chances are still against me finding anyone who would put up with me for any great length of time, but I am still a bit of a household name and I really do believe that I have gained at least four characteristics of a suitable partner and I have been fine tuning two complete but complementary skill sets based upon the top rated qualities of the top--”

“Stop,” John said, with Sherlock’s favorite fond-but-confused smile. Sherlock looked up at the man who was more than his best friend. Their eyes met. More than family, less than what he wanted. John was looking down at him with his lips quirked into the smallest smile, fond-but confused slipping seamlessly into honest fondness. His arms were crossed casually, his bare feet making indentations in the new rug. “What are you on about--put up with you? Suitable partner? Is this for a case?”

“No,” Sherlock said crisply, and took a deep breath. “I have decided that I need a romantic partner. To be happy.”

John sucked in a quiet stream of air. And soft John Watson, with his small smiles and his bare feet, became steel. Everything about him hardened from one heartbeat to the next; his posture, his tendons, his gaze, his lips. His eyes were a dark, heady blue in the low firelight. “Sorry, a _romantic partner_?”

“You were right about me,” Sherlock pressed on. Too late now to stop. “Romantic entanglement, and all that. Would complete me. I just… I feel like I have everything else in the world right now except that, and.” Sherlock paused, heart pounding madly. John was utterly silent in front of him. “I want it. And I don’t want to want it, not when I have everything else in the world, you and Rosie and Mycroft, and I know I should be happy but. I’m not. I feel--if I have all of this, the only thing I’m missing is someone to share it with.”

A sudden deep breath was the only indication that John hadn’t turned into stone.

“Sherlock, are you… are you lonely?” John asked finally. His voice was low, gravelly. _I find it difficult, this sort of stuff_.

“I’m thirty-six years old,” Sherlock said. “And I’ve never been loved. I didn’t used to want to be, didn’t think it mattered to me. But I’ve changed. And now it does. Of course I’m lonely. Weren’t you? Before Mary?” He was wearing his favorite blue dressing gown. It had been recently washed, and felt too heavy against his skin in the warm room. He felt that he would always remember that as somehow significant, that moment when he finally said the things he never got to say before to John. Every moment felt that way. An Event happening in his life that he could never take back.

Beside him stood the statue of John, a chaos of emotions. “I’m still not sure why you’re telling me this,” John said. His voice was soft and small. Unsure, in a way that John usually wasn’t. Preparing a denial, if any of this delved too deeply into his own feelings. 

Sherlock look up, his eyes flatly refusing to meet John’s, and then looked back down at his hands. “I just wanted you to know. That I’m. Looking.”

“The wo-”

“I don’t know why you keep revisiting this, and this is the absolute last time that I am going to tell you. I am not interested in women, John.” His heart fluttered madly against his ribs. “Not even her.”

“Oh,” John said faintly. His left hand was clenched into a fist so tightly it was bleached white. “So you’re. Um.”

“Gay?” Sherlock had never said the word out loud before, not in relation to himself. It trembled in the air like his hands in his lap. “I despise labels. I’ve never wanted to be identified by my sexuality. It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. But if I had to pick one, that would probably be closest. In theory.”

“In theory.”

Sherlock brought his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes wearily. “You know all this,” he said. “All of it. We’ve had this identical conversation on at least two other occasions. Even you can’t be this dull, John.”

“We’ve never really… said the words,” John hedged. “The subtext was all there, I suppose, but I never really knew.”

“And now you do.” Sherlock could hear the mockery in his own voice and wished that he could take his words back. All of them. John didn’t need to know this, any of this. John didn’t have anything to do with it anymore. Sherlock could have found someone on his own and John needn’t ever have known.

Their eyes met again, hesitant. John looked… well, if Sherlock had to choose a word (and that was something of a specialty of his, John’s literary ambitions be damned) it would be _anguished_. Torn. Jealous. Possessive. All of the things that Sherlock had seen before and had based all of his hopes of reciprocation on. Seeing those emotions on John’s expressive face now nearly made him recant everything. 

Instead he closed his eyes.

“Don’t,” John said. “Please.” Sherlock’s eyes flew open, meeting John’s equally shocked face.

“Don’t… what?” he asked.

“I… Sherlock, you must know that. Um. I… you. You have… have always been.” Stuttering, looking down, anywhere but Sherlock. Anxiety came off him in waves, making Sherlock feel nauseous. John still couldn’t say… anything. Or wouldn’t. Or simply didn’t know what to say. And that just wasn’t good enough anymore.

And suddenly Sherlock was just tired. So tired of the pretense. The obfuscation. The flat-out lies they told themselves and each other. He’d already had his chance. They both did. And now they were simply out of chances. “I know you feel something for me, John,” he said, spending energy he didn’t have to make his voice soft, soothing. Because he still loved John enough to put his feelings above his own. Would that change, when he found someone else? “I also know that it’s not enough. So please. John. For my sake. Don’t do this.”

There was silence for long moments. Sherlock saw the moment when John gathered himself. His face tightened. His lips were a pale slash across his face, his eyes shadows. His left hand pulled into a fist and didn’t release.

“I only want you to be happy,” John said. 

“So did I,” Sherlock said. 

John nodded briskly, as though the matter was concluded. Maybe it was. 

Then he walked back to his chair, military precision in every move he made. Without looking at Sherlock he picked his laptop off the floor and continued to type. The air between them cooled. Sherlock shivered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does anyone else think it's way easier to write as Sherlock since s4? I just feel like I can get inside his head so much better now. He's not nearly as much of a mystery as he used to be.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short chapter for you all. I wish I could promise an update schedule, but between my seven month old and... well, everything else, I really can't find dedicated time to sit down and write. I sincerely appreciate every hit, kudo, and comment immeasurably. Thank you for taking the time to read my words! 
> 
> Not beta'd or britpicked. I'm not really paying attention to Americanisms because that's not really my aim here, but please point out if something is so glaring that it takes you out of the story.
> 
> Thank you for reading!

That night John drank the remainder of a mostly full bottle of whiskey Sherlock hadn’t even remembered was in the flat. They had a fire going, full and too-hot, and John sat in his chair and took pull after pull from his amber-filled glass, staring at the flames and looking increasingly maudlin.

“John,” Sherlock tried once.

“Not now,” John said. His voice was just beginning to slur into his softer, less guarded tones he affected when intoxicated. He didn’t even look up to say it but continued to stare into the flames, as though the answers to every beguiling question nestled among the embers.

“John, maybe you should go home for a few days.” He could use some time too. What was it that people always said--clean breaks were easier? Maybe if John wasn’t underfoot all the time, wasn’t so present with his clever mind and his slate eyes, Sherlock could move on. Could think about moving on.

“No,” John said. He knocked back the last inch of his drink in one long swallow, his throat undulating and his head tilted back. “I’m home now.”

“Of course,” Sherlock snapped, unthinking. “That’s why you won’t move back in. That’s why you spend most of your time in your dead wife’s house.”

It was a lucky thing that the glass in John’s hand was a sturdier sort than most, else it would have shattered with the force of John’s barely restrained temper. Sherlock waited, for what he couldn’t say; this tension between them was untenable, surely John could feel that this wasn’t normal? Not even between the very best of friends, between family, one person shouldn’t be angry because the other person had mentioned in passing the desire for reciprocal affection?

Moments passed. The fire flicked in the fireplace, teasing licks of flame against the wood and the glass and the bricks. The tension eased, just a touch.

“You’re right,” John said finally.

“I am?”

“You always are,” John said with the tiniest smile; tense, but there all the same. “I’m being a cock. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“It isn’t…” Sherlock stopped, licked his lips. “I mean, you aren’t going to lose me, John.”

“Yes,” John said, lifting the empty glass to his lips. When it proved empty he sighed and let the last drop of liquid slowly ooze down the glass onto his tongue. “I am. You lost me, didn’t you? With Mary. That’s why you brought her up, isn’t it? I have no delusions, Sherlock. If you find someone,” he paused. “Well. You won’t fuck it up as much as I did, will you?”

Sherlock meant to say something, anything, but Rosie chose that moment to let out a banshee shriek from upstairs with her usual impeccable timing. Children, Sherlock thought absently, _must_ have an innate sense of interruption. Someday, when it didn’t affect him so immediately, he would have to ask John what the guidelines were for experimenting with his daughter. 

Her cry, like always, made John briefly close his eyes. The glass let out a crisp thunk when it hit the table, and Sherlock’s flatmate stood unsteadily without saying a word. 

John lumbered from his chair up the stairs, one unsteady hand on the bannister. Sherlock could hear him whispering soothing noises to his daughter until she quieted. 

Sherlock stayed in front of the fire until it was cold ash, trying to remember what he had wanted to say to John. It was an exercise in futility anyway; John never came back down the stairs.


End file.
